This morning, Tsong Mike, who lived next door, finally succumbed to one-year battle against cancer. He was 67 but he will fly a baby parachute to the skies. Among the many colors, he wore my favorite yellow, just like how my father’s skin was when he too flew a baby parachute 6 years ago.
The neighborhood today is a reminiscent of Russian architecture, in stark contrast with the first sunny day of the week. Death has a way of giving up colors but my father slipped on clear blue skies, too, Sunday, when FM stations only played the music of his youth. It’s harder to weep on sunny days. But old men love to leave on sunny days.
These old men die as I get older, one by one, in an array of cancer lottery, some as peacefully as a falling leaf, others as wild as the cold cyclones. But Tsong Mike was like a cyclone of falling leaves, squally when his body has given up on medicine, then serenely as he given up on life.
Right now, I am not taking his death lightly, because although he wasn’t anything paternal to me, he brought me back to one cold September morning, with that poignant confusion that only a son could feel, as he packs his bag and goes home to a dying father.
Death has a way of getting in to me, and boy, it sucks.
20 something, quarter-life crisis, loss of love, name it, nothing's weird.
